


Back to You

by Make_It_Worse



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Has a Praise Kink, Declarations Of Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Eventual Happy Ending, Flashbacks, Heartache, Heartbreak, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sex, Love Confessions, M/M, Praise Kink, Spooky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-01-05 23:17:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21216692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Make_It_Worse/pseuds/Make_It_Worse
Summary: Connor’s resolve cracks along with his voice, “But what if you don’t come back? What if you don’t make it?”It’s harder than usual to find his cocky self-assurance, but he manages for Connor, “You know I’m too stubborn to die at sea without kissing you one last time.”“Don’t kiss me then,” Connor mutters, staring at his feet. “Come back to me.”--Some things that are lost find their way back to us.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor’s resolve cracks along with his voice, “But what if you don’t come back? What if you don’t make it?”
> 
> It’s harder than usual to find his cocky self-assurance, but he manages for Connor, “You know I’m too stubborn to die at sea without kissing you one last time.” 
> 
> “Don’t kiss me then,” Connor mutters, staring at his feet. “Come back to me.”
> 
> \--
> 
> Some things that are lost find their way back to us.

Hank’s gaze lingers on the dwindling food supply before squeezing Connor’s hand, “You know we can’t hold out like this.”

Connor sighs heavily. They’d had this conversation every few hours since the storm had passed. The hours of raging waves and rolling seas had been terrifying; the threat of starvation nibbles at their ankles by comparison.

“Someone will come,” Connor repeats himself for the hundredth or perhaps thousandth time. Hank smooths his thumb over the back of Connor’s hand, circling a freckle that rests between his forefinger and thumb.

Connor snatches it away, “Stop trying to memorize me. You’re not going.” Hank sees the tremble on his lip despite the harshness of his words.

“Con, we aren’t going to last like this,” his eyes dart once more to the meager food supply. “We have water for weeks, but food? Between the two of us, even if we’re careful, we are talking a week at best. After that?” He doesn’t finish the question. He knows Connor knows what comes next.

Hank pushes a stray curl from Connor’s forehead, “You know I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t want that horizon to come so soon.”

Connor’s resolve cracks along with his voice, “But what if you don’t come back? What if you don’t make it?”

It’s harder than usual to find his cocky self-assurance, but he manages for Connor, “You know I’m too stubborn to die at sea without kissing you one last time.”

“Don’t kiss me then,” Connor mutters, staring at his feet. “Come back to me.”

It’s the best opportunity he’ll get. He can feel in his bones that they’ll die out here if he doesn’t do something. Even if he passes alone at sea, he’ll have the peace of knowing he tried to save them to keep him company. That, and the memory of Connor’s sweet smile the first time they—

He shakes his head. There’s no time for reveries. It will only make it harder to leave. They’d talked it through a thousand times. Their radio was obviously out of service. Someone would have come by now. The small craft on the side of the boat wasn’t meant for two. Not if they needed to take supplies to last for several days.

Hank knew how to chart by the stars. In theory, he knew where they were. In practice, with a busted engine and no radio, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do from their boat.

“You’re so young,” Connor murmurs into his hair later that afternoon. Hank won’t leave until nightfall when he can track his way by the constellations. He traces _Ursa Major_ into Connor’s ribs.

“A right cradle robber you are,” he mutters back and Connor swats at his backside. It’s good to see him smile, if only fleetingly.

“You’re terrible,” Connor mutters, “and you should respect your elders.”

Hank rolls upward, bracketing Connor between his arms. He looks smaller than usual at this angle. More fragile. Hank grins, “Make me.”

It’s frantic and rushed. Without supplies, sex isn’t possible, but they rut against each other like it’s the last time. Hank waits until Connor’s asleep before disentangling himself. It’s harder than he expected. He goes back three times to kiss his cheeks, his eyelids, his nose. He leaves his mouth untouched, as promised. He won’t truly kiss him again until they’re both back on dry land.

Sending up a silent prayer to whoever may be listening, he tries to tell himself he imagined the impassioned sob from above deck when his oars hit the sea.

By the time he comes across another ship, he’s delirious with dehydration. The ship’s Captain has Connor’s face and his voice even if he’s blonde and a good deal shorter. Connor visits him in dreams, teasing touches and pleas to hold him. He wakes into true consciousness crying into his pillow and crushing it between thick biceps in a vicious embrace.

“Sir?” A woman’s voice, soothing and firm, reaches him through the murk, “You said someone else is still out there?”

Hank struggles against waves of sleepy warmth, clinging to his panic like an adrenaline lifeline, “Connor.” His voice comes out a croak and he coughs viciously, her hand pressing calming circles into his back.

He senses her nod through her touch more so than through sight. He allows himself to sink back into sleep’s embrace as foolish hopes envelopes him in her arms.

When he bursts through the oily surface of consciousness again, the light is more sterile, the salt on the air more flat. The woman is still the same: stoic, calm, anchoring.

She holds his hand as she says the words, “They’re still looking, but they haven’t found your friend yet.”

A viscous, heavy tear rolls down Hank’s cheek at her words—a battle of dehydration versus agony.

“How long?” The words come out like bricks dragged along concrete. The woman doesn’t flinch.

“I’ve been tending to you for three days now. We found you unconscious and blistered. I can’t say how many days you’d been at sea.” Hank’s insides clench tighter, coiling around a compact chestnut of hurt in the pit of his stomach. At least five days then. Connor has another three days of food left at most. After that, a few weeks of starvation before his water ran out—assuming he could ration it appropriately. 

Days stretch into a week and then two. By the end of the third, Hank lives in a bottle of Black Lamb. He awakens one morning to find the woman in his bed and he’s not surprised. _Nora_, he remembers belatedly, _her name is Nora_.

“Let me take away the hurt for a little while,” she whispers against his temple, and her embrace is warmer than the whiskey. She’s uncommonly tall for a woman, almost of a size with Connor.

He hates himself. He hates her. They marry the following spring.

Hank lets himself think he’s happy at first. She’s caring and sweet and she _tries_ in a way that almost takes his breath away. But she isn’t Connor; she can’t compete with a dream that haunts him whenever he closes his eyes.

She cuts her nails shorts. She crops her dark hair close to her ears. Hank doesn’t deserve her. Hank doesn’t want her.

On the fifth anniversary of his rescue, they separate at his urging.

On the tenth anniversary, she comes to the house to hold his hand as he cries.

“I wanted to be angry with you forever,” her voice is softer than the thumb stroking the back of his hand. Her hair is long again.

“I’d deserve it,” he rumbles back, hating how much he misses soft touches, how much it hurts that it’s not Connor’s fingers laced with his own.

She shakes her head and strokes his hair as he leans into her shoulder, “It’s my own fault. I knew what he meant to you. I thought…I was young and foolish. I thought a lot of things.”

Hank tries not to blink tears into her blouse, but it’s a losing battle. It always is this time of year, “I shouldn’t have let you.”

She snorts, “No one has ever _let_ me do anything. It was bound to happen whether you were ready for it or not. I was…am…head strong.”

Hank’s heart lightens in fractions the longer she talks. It’s soothing to know his past hasn’t damaged her as much as it’s wrecked him.

Every year, she visits a few weeks after the anniversary. Hank doesn’t drink himself unconscious anymore, but he doesn’t like company either. He appreciates when she arrives with soup and simple books to read to him when the loneliness becomes unbearable.

“I heard you still look for him,” she comments on the fifteenth anniversary. Hank stiffens until she sighs and brushes his hair away from his eyes. He has the first signs of greys showing at the temples.

“I worry,” she says simply. “I don’t think it’s healthy.” In the early years, she had helped him follow up on leads. Lately, he’s taken to doing his research in private away from judging eyes.

“I know he’s gone,” is Hank’s immediate answer even if his gut gnaws at him. “I just can’t leave him out there. I need to bring him home. He deserves a proper…a…” He can’t say the words and his coffee table swims alarmingly before spilling over the rims of his eyes in heavy tears.

“Fuck,” he mutters into the heels of his hands as his fingertips dig into dripping eyes, “Why can’t my heart let him go?”

He doesn’t see her haunted eyes as she squeezes him, “If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” A new band rests on her finger. Even if her husband doesn’t understand this yearly ritual, he doesn’t try to interfere with it either. Hank wonders how many years he has left before Nora relaxes her grip on the past as well.

With each passing year, technology improves. Hank had narrowed down his search to a tight circle barely more than a mile wide. He’d spent countless hours at sea with sonar, begging the ocean to bring Connor home. He’d never found so much as a hint of wreckage, but it didn’t stop him from combing the same stretch of sea as often as life allowed.

Hank isn’t sure how much Nora knows of his sea crawling or how much she guesses. Still, he appreciates her visits, even if he doesn’t have much need for her concern. He was doing ok for himself; he was a well-respected sergeant with the Swansboro Police Department in the Carolinas. If he kept it up, he might be up for lieutenant in a few years. He’d thought about going home, heading back to Detroit to try and forget, but he could never abandon the coast or Connor.

Nora’s tapping him between the temples three hours after he turns in for the night at the ungodly time of 2:15, “Hank. Hank, something is happening.”

This isn’t the first time someone reported a lead. When he first sent out the plea, a handful of people came forward. As the story gained traction and the internet caught up with the times, false stories began to plague him.

“Really, Hank. This isn’t like the call from Jersey. Jeffrey is there himself.” Hank takes the phone from her, his face heavy with skepticism. His heart freezes when he hears a familiar voice shouting in the background_ WHERE IS HE?!_

It’s a nightmare. It’s a dream come true. He’s half into Nora’s shoes before he registers her shouted, “_WAIT!_”

He opens the door to a sea of flashes and blurry faces; reports shouting questions. None of it matters. He hasn’t heard that voice in years other than in his darkest dreams; his heart hammers into the wheel as he leans into it, willing traffic lights to change in his favor.

If pressed afterward, Hank wouldn’t be able to recall the drive to the docks. One minute, he was belting his robe, too hurried to properly dress. The next, he was shivering in his pajamas at the waterfront with hair standing wildly on end. The combination of disrupted sleep and stress-combing his fingers through it made him look more than moderately unkempt. More cameras are waiting here, but Hank ignores them.

He hasn’t seen his ship in years, but he can remember every inch, every imperfection and scratch, with laser precision detail. He thumbs at dent by the cleat and his fingers drag over the frayed knot looped around it. He frowns at a stray bit of rust he’d never gotten the chance to take care of; there should be more. The boat should be a rusted out hull by n—

“Please, his name is Hank Anderson. You have to—” Hank’s head snaps around at the mention of his name, at the familiar voice drifting to him on a mild breeze.

The boat is too small for the news crews to get close; it’s not meant to hold more than eight people at most and even that was a stretch. With Connor gesticulating wildly between Jeffrey and a civilian Hank vaguely recognizes, it’s going to be a tight squeeze once Hank steps onboard. He hesitates on the swim platform, trying to squint against the backlighting illuminating the three men.

Pulling his heart out of his throat, he croaks, “Connor?”

He hears a shriek of his name, sees a human blur catapult toward him, and then he’s reeling back from the force of impact. Slender hands snake up his back and Connor feels frailer than a memory in his arms. Hank inhales deeply, and Connor still smells like his dreams. Even as his mind sounds the alarm that something is wrong, Hank can’t pay it any mind. Every atom of his body focuses on Connor and his pounding heart trying to beat its way into Hank’s chest.

He buries his nose into Connor’s dark curls and vaguely wonders how he’s been able to keep his hair short. He dismisses it as unimportant, returning Connor’s embrace as hot tears squeeze out between clenched eyelids.

He wants to look at him, but terror that he won’t be there when he opens his eyes keep them firmly shut. Connor murmurs his name on repeat, his lips moving against Hank’s throat.

In the end, it’s Connor who pulls away first, “I was so worried. I thought I’d lost you. I—” The words curdle into an unpleasant choking sound when brown eyes meet blue. Connor’s fingers drift as if through wet cement before they touch lightly to the crow’s feet around Hank’s eyes, the silver glinting at his temples.

“No, please. Not again,” Connor whimpers the words, clenching his fists into Hank’s shirt as if afraid he will evaporate into thin air. “Not another dream.”

Hank places his hands over Connor’s, trying his best not to stare. They can’t do this here; not with the cameras and everybody watching.

“You’re not dreaming, Con.” Even if all he wants to do is scream, Hank maintains his calm façade.

Connor’s head snaps up before pinching himself sharply and sucking in a painful gasp. Watery, terrified eyes find Hank’s face, “I don’t understand. You’ve only been gone for five days.”

The panic that had slithered unpleasantly in his guts at seeing his old ship breaks free at Connor’s words. Before he can stop himself or think his response through, he murmurs, “I’ve been looking for you for fifteen years.”

If Hank wasn’t already holding him, Connor would have brained himself on the deck as he fainted. Scooping Connor beneath the knees, Hank shoulders his way through nosy reporters. Jeffrey helps him load Connor into the car, his voice pitched low for the sake of privacy, “I can buy you time. You were the only one who ever filed him as a missing person. He doesn’t have family as far as we know. He’ll need a doctor. Soon. We have to process this one by the book. Too many eyes already.”

Jeffrey’s concerned gaze dips low to catch Hank’s eyes, “Hey, man. You ok? I know he looks frail, but—”

He cuts himself short at the anguished look on Hank’s face, “He hasn’t aged, Jeff. It’s him, but…” Hank fades off to stare at the stars as if they may rearrange themselves in answer.

Jeffrey knew the story well enough, but Hank had hidden away all his pictures of Connor save for one on his bedside table. Even that was pressed flat to the surface; he couldn’t bear to look at Connor’s smiling face around the anniversary. For all their years of friendship, Jeff had never pressed Hank for too many salient details.

When Fowler continues to stare at him incredulously, Hank pulls out his wallet. He flips it open to a faded, scratched photo booth printout, “This was taken in 2012 right before…everything happened. He was thirty-two; I was twenty-seven.”

Jeff’s hand comes down hard on Hank’s wrist, but Hank barely registers the pressure, “Hank, you listen to me. Take him home. Don’t speak to anyone. This is going to spiral fast if…if…_fuck_.” Hank makes a sound of agreement; there’s no way this won’t wind up as a circus show eventually. The only things they have going for them are Connor’s relative anonymity and the fact that most people in this town move at a speed best described as a mosey. Even with reporters, it will take a while to drum up real interest.

Connor’s head lolls limply to one side and Hank reaches out to adjust him into a more comfortable position. His thumb lingers over a freckle on his cheekbone. He’s tanner than Hank remembers—likely a result of prolonged exposure to the sun.

“Five days,” Hank mutters to himself on the drive back to his dingy home. A gentle tendril of anger breaks through the edges of his confusion to throttle his relief. Connor had only endured _five days_ of separation while he’d spent well over a decade—

“_Stop it_,” Hank hisses at himself, smacking the heel of his hand against his forehead. This isn’t Connor’s fault. He’d long stopped dreaming that he’d find Connor alive. He would have settled for his bones. Having him whole with sun-pinked ears should be elating. It should be glorious and relieving and—

It’s not.

When Hank shoulders through the door of his rundown sea cottage, the sun is just blinking its eyes over the horizon. Nora helps him get Connor into bed before clearing out; she’s visibly spooked with a mouthful of questions, but she purses her lips around them. Now isn’t the time. She isn’t sure if there will ever be a time.

She thought it would hurt if Hank ever found his long-lost love, and it does. Just not how she expected. She’d hoped finding Connor, no matter how he found him, would be a cure-all for Hank’s agony. Looking at him as he watches Connor sleep, she knows something is still incredibly, terribly wrong.

“Call me if you need me, H.” She rests her hand on his shoulder and he touches it briefly in acknowledgment. He falls asleep with his head on the bed next to Connor’s chest. Fighting the persistent tugs of exhaustion, Hank loses consciousness while listening to the steady beating of Connor’s heart.

If it’s bizarre for Hank to see Connor looking exactly the same as memory, it must’ve been mental gymnastics for Connor to take in Hank’s aged appearance. He hadn’t treated himself well in those first few years, but his work had given him purpose again. He wasn’t thriving, but he wasn’t out of his prime yet either.

Even so, Hank didn’t have fine lines around his eyes when Connor knew him. He didn’t have a steely glint to his hair or the markings of prolonged depression. He feels distinctly inadequate next to Connor’s gentle features and graceful limbs.

Even in his twenties, Hank had always felt his looks were incongruent with Connor’s. He knew he had a certain allure, but it wasn’t the same as when Connor stepped into a room. He’d been taken aback when Connor initially approached him. Now, he can’t help but wonder if Connor would even give him a second glance.

Despite his interrupted sleep, Hank wakes first shortly before noon. He has about twelve minutes of agonizing over what Connor will say or think when he regains consciousness. Hank doesn’t manage to say more than his name when Connor rolls weakly to wretch onto the carpet. He never did well transitioning from the sea to dryland.

He looks clammy and lost. His eyes roam blearily before landing squarely on Hank. Connor’s pupils dilate noticeably before taking on a distressing wet sheen, “Hank?”

Hank reaches for his hand slowly so as not to alarm him. Connor’s answering squeeze soothes some of his fears.

“I don’t understand,” he says after staring at Hank’s face in open confusion. Hank doesn’t blame him.

“A ship found me on the fifth day. I was delirious, but I sent them to look for you. Nor—the nurse said I wouldn’t stop saying your name.” Hank’s mouth gives his ex-wife’s name a wide berth. If Connor notices the stammer, he doesn’t comment. “They couldn’t find anything. It was like you vanished into the sea. Once they released me from the hospital, I went searching for you myself. I followed the stars—”

Hank’s voice gives out on a wheeze. He’d long accepted that Connor was gone. Telling him the story settles like a hot poker to the gut.

“I could hear you call out to me,” Connor says quietly and his hands tighten around Hank’s. “Every night, I’d hear you shouting but I couldn’t see you. I would yell and scream myself hoarse, but you never heard me.” Hank’s stomach spasms and Connor mutters, “I thought I was dreaming it or going mad.”

“Con, I would never—” Hank’s cellphone clatters loudly on the bedside table, and Nora’s name reflects back up at him. “Fucking hell.”

A smile almost touches Connor’s features at the familiar swearing, “Who’s Nora?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/WorseMake/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Would you rather I have left you out there?” He leaves the words _to die_ unspoken. 
> 
> He flinches when Connor hisses, “Yes.” Staring at him, incredulous and hurt, he can’t fit in a word around the pain radiating from Connor’s body as he shoots to his feet, unable to sit any longer, “At least then I had hope. At least then, I didn’t have to see indifference on your face! I wouldn’t have to imagine you with her, touching her, fuc—”
> 
> Hank didn’t intend to knock over a chair, but it clatters loudly behind him all the same. His chest slams into Connor’s until his back is flush to the wall with Hank’s arms bracketing his head. His breath comes out in hot pants of rage over Connor’s nose, lips, chin.
> 
> “I have never been indifferent,” it’s an odd word to spark his fury, but his body touching Connor’s after so many years is a balm to the wound that could never heal in his absence. He smells like salt and heaven and Connor. He wants to hold him and drown in him. He wants to kiss him, but—
> 
> “I can’t do this,” Connor mutters, dashing the back of his fist harshly against his eyes. He slips beneath Hank’s arms and leaves him staring at a suburbia-beige wall.

Hank hadn’t forgotten Connor’s temper so much as time had softened the memory of it, “So did you replace our dog as well?” Connor’s voice is sharp and angled for maximum injury.

Hank resists the urge to pinch his nose, “No, Connor. I didn’t _replace_ anything.”

Connor gestures wildly at the phone resting on the table between them. His ire had dogged Hank’s steps to the kitchen but now he directed it at Hank’s two-generations-too-old smartphone, “Well, you waited all of six months to run off and get married! Did you two buy a car together? Go to the pound and find a replacement animal? Did you even wait until Teddy die—”

Hank slaps his palm flat to the table, “Enough.” Connor’s mouth gapes open, but Hank cuts him off before he can speak, “You were _dead_, Connor. It’s been fifteen years. No one can survive that long. I needed to forget you. I needed to move on. I needed to—”

“Replace me?” Connor supplies bitterly.

Hank shakes his head, “Every day was agony, Connor. I spent months, _years_, looking for you. You deserved—I couldn’t just leave your body and—”

His voice cracks. This is too hard. So much worse than what Hank had long ago accepted to be truth. He can’t wrap his mind around the fact that, for Connor, it’s been a matter of days. Not even a week and Hank has married, divorced, aged—

Connor’s temper can’t conceal the source of his outrage for long. Pain, thick and visceral like spit from a deranged beast, coats his words, “But you did. You moved on; you married _her_.” The final word comes out a wail and Hank sends out a silent thanks that Nora had the foresight to make herself scarce before Connor woke up.

Hank’s eyes close in a heavy, steadying blink. Connor has no idea, none, how badly Hank wounded Nora, how much it destroyed him to even attempt to find a new life when he couldn’t put his old one to rest.

Speaking between steepled hands, Hank rumbles, “Would you rather I have left you out there?” He leaves the words _to die_ unspoken.

He flinches when Connor hisses, “Yes.” Staring at him, incredulous and hurt, he can’t fit in a word around the pain radiating from Connor’s body as he shoots to his feet, unable to sit any longer, “At least then I had hope. At least then, I didn’t have to see indifference on your face! I wouldn’t have to imagine you with her, touching her, fuc—”

Hank didn’t intend to knock over a chair, but it clatters loudly behind him all the same. His chest slams into Connor’s until his back is flush to the wall with Hank’s arms bracketing his head. His breath comes out in hot pants of rage over Connor’s nose, lips, chin.

“I have _never_ been indifferent,” it’s an odd word to spark his fury, but his body touching Connor’s after so many years is a balm to the wound that could never heal in his absence. He smells like salt and heaven and _Connor_. He wants to hold him and drown in him. He wants to kiss him, but—

“I can’t do this,” Connor mutters, dashing the back of his fist harshly against his eyes. He slips beneath Hank’s arms and leaves him staring at a suburbia-beige wall.

Hank stands dumbly until he hears the slide of a latch. His movements like molasses, he’s too slow to shield Connor from the reality waiting for him on the other side of his door, “Connor, don’t—”

A flash goes off in Connor’s face the second he pulls the door wide. Hank winces, already imagining the headline that will accompany Connor’s anguished, tear-stained face.

Placing a gentle, protective hand over Connor’s shoulder, Hank doesn’t waste any words on the few vultures hanging around his yard. He raises a one-fingered _fuck you_ in their direction before closing the door and steering Connor to his couch. As expected, there aren’t many reporters out there. The town is slow to pick up a scoop, but that photo op would likely draw more in the coming days.

Looking at Connor’s wrecked profile, he’s nowhere near ready to deal with any of it.

“I thought—when a voice finally came through over the radio—I thought this nightmare was over.” Connor’s tone comes out a little flat as if he’s trying to distance himself from the truth, from Hank. Hank takes two tentative steps and reaches for him once before lowering his hand back to his side. Connor’s right there on his couch, but he might as well still be lost between waves.

“I’m still me,” Hank tries to keep the defensiveness from his tone, but Connor’s reaction is eating away at his insecurities.

“You’re _not_,” Connor’s voice come out a harsh, cracked whisper. Hank can feel his insides crumble and he starts to wonder if Connor was right. Maybe it would be better if he simply vanished and remained a question mark in Hank’s past.

Hank’s lungs freeze and struggle to inhale air at the thought. No matter what, he refuses to believe that. There’s no denying the throb in his chest when he looks at Connor is still one of deep, unshakable love. It just has a new layer of heartache gilding its edges.

He’d always thought Connor was the more mature of the two of them in ordinary circumstances. Where Hank was loud and reckless, Connor was soft-spoken and cautious. He could usually be counted on to be the level headed of the two. Until pushed to his limits. Hank knew better than anyone how fragile Connor could become. He cloaked his fear or his hurt with a thick layer of anger. The heavier the stress, the harsher he responded.

In the past, the unfortunate defense mechanism had caused an increasing number of fights. Hank had figured it out two months shy of their first anniversary. He’d stomped out of Connor’s apartment in high dudgeon after a seemingly pointless fight. He needed room to breathe and to give Connor time to calm down. He’d stormed back in a minute later to retrieve his jacket. He found Connor curled over it on his knees and leaking silent tears.

Wet, terrified brown eyes had locked with his and it had taken Hank less than three strides to cross the room and wrap him in a hug. They wound up stretched out across the carpet with Connor’s face pressed into Hank’s neck.

“I thought I’d lose you. That you’d figure out I’m not—” he broke off around a shuddering breath before trying again, “I thought you wouldn’t want me if you knew. If I wasn’t…”

“Perfect?” Hank had supplied because he knew Connor tried harder than anyone he’d ever met to achieve perfection. Connor had nodded and Hank rolled to pin him beneath him, resting his elbows on either side of Connor’s face. “Con, we can’t keep having this same fight.”

“I know,” Connor’s voice had come out small and afraid—the things he usually hid behind the irate bravado. Hank could taste Connor’s panic in the air; he brushed it aside with a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“It’s gonna take a lot more than you caterwauling at me to shake me, but it needs to stop. You need to talk to me.” Connor had stared at him for three blinks before digesting his words.

“So you’re not dumping me,” he’d blurted out before flushing like a boiled lobster beneath his freckles.

“No, you dingus,” Hank had huffed while shaking his overgrown hair in exasperated fondness. Sure, he’d been annoyed at Connor’s verbal barbs, but he hadn’t aimed any of them at Hank in that argument. He’d worked himself up beyond reasonable conversation and Hank needed to take a breather until they both calmed down. Connor had read it as a dismissal.

Hank had reassured him of his affections that night with the press of his teeth to Connor’s shoulder and the rough tangle of his fingers in Connor’s hair. He whispered everything he adored about Connor against the shell of his ear like a balm against his insecurities.

Connor had steered their sex life up to that point, and Hank had been content to let him, not wanting to push. Now, it was something Hank realized was to Connor’s detriment. He needed someone to help him let go, to strip him down to basic primal need, to put him back together.

_Hank, Hank, Hank._ Connor had panted it on repeat, frantic and needy, as if Hank’s name was an anchor in a storm.

Taking over the reins for him, Hank’s grip had been demanding but gentle; dominant but safe, “I’m right here. I’ve got you. You’re so good, Connor.” Connor had convulsed at the words and it was the first time Hank understood how someone could cry during sex and have it be a good thing.

Later, cocooned in a nest of blankets and Hank’s arms, Connor explained himself better. He’d lowered walls no other had ever been behind before. He’d shook like a pomeranian left outside on a cold winter night through most of it. Hank stroked his arms, his cheek, the small of his back anytime he’d grow quiet, afraid he’d said too much.

“So you think if you’re not perfect all the time that I won’t want you?” Hank summarized half an hour later. Connor had huffed and rolled his eyes at the extremely boiled down explanation.

“More or less,” he conceded.

A low thrum sounded up Hank’s neck, not quite a growl, “If you believe that, then I’m not doing a very good job.”

“Wh-What?” Connor startled as much at the tone as the words.

Pulling Connor’s chin up into a firm, whiskery kiss, Connor had half wondered if Hank was attempting to go again by how thoroughly he was claiming his mouth.

When Hank finally broke the kiss in favor of speaking, his voice was heavy and raw, “You don’t have to try so hard to make me love you. I already do.”

By their first anniversary, they could read each other’s emotions like a well-loved book. Connor took time to build up his anxieties and insecurities; Hank could diffuse them before they even got close to igniting. Hank, on the other hand, barked like a vicious dog on the end of his chain when provoked. Connor had learned soft touch went a lot further than words with Hank until he could calm his agitation.

With the gulf of years and misery, Hank’s rough edges have blunted. His words have grown clumsy in his mouth and he’s afraid of saying the wrong thing. Even so, he knows they can’t remain like this. Connor will wind himself up to the point of breaking. Hank knows he needs to be the first to reach out, that Connor doesn’t have any possible way to understand how badly Hank had suffered if he doesn’t explain it to him.

He knows Connor’s hurting, too. Connor hunches his shoulders under the weight of betrayal, trying and failing to shrug it off. Even so, underneath the distracting anger and the palpable hurt lurked the trembling crux of the problem—Connor is afraid.

Hank’s fingers find Connor’s and he encounters no resistance, “You’re right. I’m a different man than the one who rowed away from you that night. But I never gave up on finding you. I could never replace you, Con.” Connor’s fingers flex painfully around Hank’s and his defenses lower a few critical millimeters.

He isn’t surprised that Connor slams them back into place at the mention of his ex-wife, “Nora didn’t deserve the things I put her through.” Connor tries to wrench his hand free, but Hank hangs onto it. “I won’t pretend I didn’t care for her; I’m not an animal. But she knew—knows—that I was never in love with her. I’m lucky I can still count her as a friend.”

“_Lucky_,” Connor spits out with considerable venom, but Hank doesn’t relinquish his grip.

“I wouldn’t be here to welcome you home if it wasn’t for her.” He says the words aloud, acknowledging the truth for the first time. If she hadn’t checked in on him, made him accountable, he likely would’ve sailed back out to sea to let the ocean take him. “Living without you, always wondering, never finding any answers—it was hell. I would have dreams of you starving to death, thinking I abandoned you. Or nightmares of your body, bloated and picked apa—”

“Stop,” Connor says quietly, desperately. Hank falls silent willingly; they aren’t memories he cares to revisit. Where Connor had been trembling before, he’s violently shaking now. Hank knows Connor must’ve been terrified alone on that ship. He remembers his own terror of eating the last of his food and watching the water supply slowly decrease. He had the advantage of action; he could try to do something about his situation. Connor had to sit and hope for rescue.

Hank’s thumb rubs at the web between Connor’s forefinger and thumb and Connor lets out a shaky laugh, “I guess you memorized me after all.” Hank looks down at the freckle. He knows them all by heart. Flipping Connor’s hand to expose his wrist, he runs his fingertips over the smattering of freckles that hide there.

Connor sucks in a shuddering breath and Hank can’t be certain if it’s from his touch or Connor’s crying. They sit in silence for several minutes and Hank allows himself to pretend this will all blow over and they can live their lives. He knows Jeffrey is going to come knocking and soon, but in this moment, he allows himself to hope.

A loud banging at his door has them both back on the defensive faster than a whip cracking. Connor’s head jerks to the door and Hank is already on his feet to peer through the peephole.

“If it’s one of those fucking vultures out front, I swear…” Hank mutters a few choice threats and he squints through the small window. “Oh, hell.” Somehow, it’s worse than reporters.

Hank stands back to let the visitor in and Nora shakes her long hair loose from her tightly bundled hood once safely over the threshold.

Hank is impressed she’s still standing under the murderous look Connor shoots in her direction. For her part, Nora appears unfazed. She crosses the room and sticks out her hand, “You must be Connor. I’m Nora. I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

_Bold_, Hank thinks to himself, _and a little dumb_**. **Nora often took a triage approach to problems with a detached efficiency that was hard to argue with. Shocked into a temporary ceasefire, Connor accepts her handshake.

She hustles them into Hank’s tiny kitchen, shooing them to the chairs. Hank rights the one he knocked over feeling stupid at the show of machismo now that their emotions weren’t so charged and restless.

“H, you look like shit.” There’s no venom to her words, but Connor bristles at the familiarity. Hank rests a hand on his arm and shoots him a look that he hopes conveys his intent. _Give her a chance_.

She gestures down the hall, “Why don’t you go shower and shave? You’ll feel better when you’re clean.” Hank recognizes a dismissal when he sees one. She wants to talk to Connor alone. Connor must come to this conclusion as well because his eyes go round and his fingers flex into the meat of Hank’s thighs.

Hank isn’t sure whether Nora’s a genius or if he’ll come out to a Battle Royale: Previous Lovers style fight in his kitchen. Connor isn’t going to relax his guard whether Hank is there or not, but Nora can offer him insight that Hank can’t. She can give him an outsider’s perspective with more tact than Hank can. It’s too close to the bone for him.

When Hank shuffles down the hall, Connor curls in on himself as if expecting a verbal beating. Nora moves about the kitchen with the familiarity of someone who lived there. Connor tries and fails not to hate her on sight but he holds his tongue for Hank’s sake. Not that he’s feeling particularly forgiving, but he can’t go back out to the mini-mob on Hank’s lawn. Not without a car, a job—

Realization that everything is gone crashes over Connor like a wave from a violent, stormy sea. He doesn’t know what happened to his savings, his clothes, his everything. He breathes in shallow and rapid like a wounded animal and startles badly when Nora touches his wrist.

“Breathe, hon. You need to breathe.” She sets a mug of tea in front of him along with a plump jar of honey. Connor recognizes the logo and his vision begins to swim. His heart pulses sharp, raw, and agonized over something so familiar and so small.

“I won’t pretend to understand what you’re going through, but you have my sympathy. I thought my life was over after the divorce. H’s life basically stopped the day they gave up the search for you.” She stirs her own tea, careful not to make eye contact.

“Why’d you marry him then?” The words come out sharper and meaner than a cleaver.

Nora doesn’t flinch, “I’m stubborn. I was as hell-bent on saving him as he was recovering you. I thought if I dragged him alongside me, if I could fill that void even a little, he’d come alive again.”

She grows quiet and old pain throbs weakly behind her eyes, “I thought it had worked for a time, but he was just going through the motions. His heart couldn’t let you go.”

Before Connor can think of something cutting to say, she rises and leaves the kitchen. He watches her shadow on the wall as she rummages in the dark corner of Hank’s living room. When she returns, she’s holding what appears to be a photo album. Like hell is he going to look at their happy memories.

At the sight of his own face, he lowers back down into the chair. He stares at it, trying to absorb what he’s seeing. He knows it’s been years, he can see the passage of time on Hank’s face, but it’s still bizarre to see a reward poster for any information that brought him home safely. Hank had offered _a lot _of money. Money Connor knows he certainly didn’t have while they were dating.

He flips through the macabre scrapbook, reading over news clippings and police reports. There’d even been a horrible period where the police suspected Hank of murder. His own badly deteriorated health from days at sea helped Hank’s case. That, and a lack of a ship. Connor can tell at least one detective was working the angle that Connor had gotten the boat up and running again somehow and had sailed away.

The news stories begin hopeful, pleading with local boaters to keep their eyes peeled. Volunteers and the coast guard searched the seas for days, pushing past the point of survivability for Hank’s sake. Hank had said it himself. _I couldn’t just leave your body_. He wanted to bring Connor home one way or the other, no matter the cost.

“What is this?” Connor fingers at the last page. It’s a large map covered in red circles, all of them hashed. Some of them have multiple hash marks and a set of tallies line the side of the image.

Nora’s face grows tight, but she answers readily enough, “Those are the places he searched himself. He went on dives, scoured the ocean for debris or any sign of your boat. These darker ones?” She indicates the circles with double or even triple line throughs, “Those are places he searched more than once. The tallies are the number of trips he made.”

Connor’s eyes are swollen, but they manage to leak more tears. The hurt is no less, but it’s shifted from a place of betrayal to mutual injury. He traces his fingers over the map. Not a single spot of it is unmarked by ink.

“He suffered horrendously for years. There were nights I would wake up to find him blackout drunk on the couch with your pillow in a death grip. I made him walk beside me, but he wasn’t living. Not without you.” Her voice pitches high and tight on the last word and Connor meets a gaze as watery as his own. It’s harder to hate her like this, knowing a little more.

The tension between them softens as they drink their tea in silence, listening to the man they both loved as he showers.

She rises to put her empty mug in the sink and clears her throat. There’s a finality to the sound of it, “I’m going to go. I won’t pretend I know you, but I know H. I know what it’s like to love him and lose him. You still have him, Connor. His heart could never let you go.”

Appreciation for what she must be going through settles uneasily on his conscience. He’d been behaving like the only injured party. He’d never considered what it must’ve been like for her trying to compete with a dead man.

Slipping back under her hood, she gives his shoulder a squeeze. It’s a little too hard to be comforting, but it’s not an aggressive gesture either, “Ask him about his journal.”

Connor isn’t sure what he expected to read when he made the request. Hank had gone chillingly blank before turning on his heel without a word, dripping silently down the hall. He pressed a simple, black, leather-bound book into Connor’s hands. He wasn’t sure whose were shaking worse.

The first few entries are overwhelmingly nostalgic. He hadn’t realized Hank kept a journal much less wrote with such detail. The pages detail the days leading up to the boat trip and phrases leap out at him.

…_ happier than I’ve ever been…_

_…never loved before now, not like this…_

He can sense Hank’s growing gleeful nervousness as his penmanship became spikier in his haste to get out his thoughts.

The day of their departure jams itself into Connor’s throat.

_He doesn’t know. I can tell. He’s got a terrible poker face. Got the ring just in time. Inscription took forever, but it’ll be worth it._

_God, I hope he says yes._

Connor’s lungs turn to ash as his chest burns under the weight of new knowledge.

“You were going to propose.” It’s not a question. He has the proof between his hands written in faded ink.

“Yes,” Hank’s voice doesn’t even qualify as a whisper, but Connor hears him as if he screamed straight into his ear.

Tears scatter on the worn pages and he hears Hank suck in a sharp, pained breath. He reads more entries, palpable terror oozing out of the past as Hank tried to find his lost lover. The terror shifts to rage when he reaches the entry where they called off the search.

Connor watches Hank move through the stages of grief, inventing a few along the way. He tries not to scowl at the more hopeful entries about Nora. He hadn’t been happy, but he wasn’t outright miserable with her. She’d been good for his health, at any rate, as it seems she was the one who stopped him from drinking himself to death.

The entries grow fewer ad farther between until the divorce. There’s only one recent entry judging by the year of it.

_Dreamed about you again. It was a good dream this time. It’s worse, though, when they’re good. Because then I have to wake up to this nightmare. You’re still gone. I miss you. _

Hank had wandered aimlessly around the room, moving from one pointless task to the next while Connor read. He’s rinsing Nora’s mug when Connor closes the journal and sets it on the table. His fingers twitch when Connor looks up at him as if he wants to reach out to him, to hold him.

He’s angry, so unbelievably angry at what life has dealt them. The years that had evidently passed for Hank while amounting to a meager handful of days for himself. Connor’s heart screams for Hank’s, has been since the moment he heard the oars hit the water. Now that he’s here, now that everything’s changed, it’s cruel to dangle Hank in front of him like this.

Meeting Hank’s gaze, overwhelming hope nearly barrels him over. Hank had spent the better part of fifteen years looking for Connor. He’d never given up bringing him home even if it was just to lay him to rest. His core cracks and wails its greatest wish as it bleeds into his chest.

Connor rises and Hank meets him halfway on the linoleum floor. Connor looms forward and the fragile plain of his chest presses gently against the broader expanse of Hank’s torso. He feels delicate enough to shatter.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Connor whispers against his jaw.

Hank tentatively raises his arms to rest around Connor’s waist, “I know the feeling.”

“No,” Connor mumbles, gripping Hank impossibly tight in return, “I thought—fifteen years, a wife—how could you still want me?”

Hank would laugh if Connor’s heart wasn’t breaking all over his kitchen floor. He drops to his knees, hugging Connor around the waist. Connor sinks down to join him, pressing their foreheads together, “Do you…are we…?”

Connor can’t seem to give words to the question and Hank’s hands, roughened by time and life, cradle Connor’s slender, freckled face, “I have never stopped loving you.”

Connor’s lips are soft and damp with tears when he tentatively lifts his chin toward Hank’s mouth. They taste like salt and salvation as Hank makes good on his promise after all this time. There’s a tremble on Connor’s pout and Hank buries his hands in Connor’s hair, content to never let him go. Connor sobs into his mouth and Hank swallows his heartache. He’s carried his own for fifteen years. He can stand to stomach a little more to ease the burden for Connor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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